Secondly, the Spaniard was to be assailed in the West Indies;--to intercept his fleets, to invade his possessions, to fortify garrisons, and to establish there government confederacies. This, as Buckingham planned, was to be undertaken, at the common charge of the kingdom, by a company “incorporated for the West, as there already is for the East;” and the naval force was to consist of a fleet composed of two ships of the line, eighteen ships, and two pinnaces of the merchant adventurers.
The King’s ships were to be manned with twenty seamen and fifty soldiers, the merchants’ with sixty seamen and one hundred soldiers, the pinnaces with twenty seamen. To this armament was to be added twenty Newcastle ships, each with thirty seamen and one hundred soldiers apiece, making in all 2,120 seamen and 3,900 landsmen.
Parliament was to be applied to in each estate for a general subscription. The nobility at the rate of 100l. a man, to be paid in two years--this, it was computed, would amount to 4,900l. (60,000l.); the gentry and yeomen, 150,000l.; the cities and corporate towns, 24,000l.; the six confederate companies of merchants, including the East India “companies, may,” as the author of this plan remarked, “well contribute.”[[280]] To the principle of this scheme of Buckingham’s may be traced the origin of many subsequent discontents. In his ardour for achieving the power of England, or perhaps, in part, for avenging affronts which he might consider as almost personal, he forgot all constitutional rights. The remark of Bolingbroke occurs to the mind, on reading this plan of arbitrary and almost indiscriminate taxation. Buckingham, says that writer, “had, in his own days, and he hath in ours, the demerits of beginning a struggle between prerogative and privilege, and of establishing a sort of warfare between the prince and the people.”[[281]]
On the first of April, 1624, Buckingham addressed the committee of both Houses, assembled in the painted chamber. The object of his speech was to press the necessity of raising a loan of 100,000l., to fit out the navy. Buckingham had, by this time, fully determined upon a war with Spain, not, as Roger Coke expresses it, for the “recovery of the Palatinate,” but to express his hatred against Olivarez, and, therefore, “a fleet must be rigged up.”[[282]] According to the Duke’s account of the matter, upon the breaking off of the treaty with Spain, he was commanded by His Majesty to take a survey of the navy, and to prepare it for “all occasions.” Upon conferring with the “officers thereof concerning their reparation,” Buckingham was informed that a very large sum would be requisite to furnish the fleet with necessaries and crews. No means could be suggested of raising the adequate sum. “My lords and gentlemen,” said the Duke, “His Majesty has imposed a great trust on me in this office of Admiralty, and I can do nothing without money. Such monies as I have of my own I will most willingly expend in this service, but that alone will do no good without future assistance.”
He then expounded his plan; that which has already been detailed, of levying a tax on the three estates for the expenses of the fleet, appears for the time to have been abandoned. He now recommended their sending for “monied men,” to raise a loan, of which, he assured them, not one penny should be applied to any other purpose than the one mentioned.[[283]] “And let me tell you,” he added in conclusion, “that you have great reason to take this into a present and careful consideration, for I have lately been advertised, by letters from Spain, that they have now in readiness a great fleet, exceeding that of eighty-eight, with provisions of 200 or 220 of flat-bottom boats, to serve them in this their intended designs; and the Spaniards have of late so intruded upon our coasts, that they have taken an English ship in the face of us. This was advertised by a servant of mine own, who spake with the pilot who was in that ship when it was taken.”
This application was followed by immediate efforts to restore the British navy; the numerous documents in the State Paper Office, to which reference has been made, most completely contradict the assertion of one of Buckingham’s bitterest enemies, Roger Coke, that after “Buckingham became Lord Admiral, the English navy lay unarmed, and fit for Spain; that he neglected the guarding of the seas, whereby the trade of the nation not only decayed, but the seas became ignominiously infested by pirates and enemies, to the loss of very many of the merchants and subjects of England.”[[284]]
With regard to pirates, most of the ports were taxed in King James’s time, by way of contribution, to prevent them; and little more could be done until the navy was repaired and augmented. There are innumerable letters manifesting Buckingham’s extreme care to clear the Channel from pirates. The light erected on the Lizard Point, as Sir J. Killigrew, in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, then ambassador at the Hague, remarked, “might speak itself to most parts of Christendom.”[[285]] The forts and defences were inspected, and many oversights in Lord Zouch’s wardership remedied. Such were Buckingham’s exertions. His contemporaries were singularly ungrateful to him for the benefits which he laboured to procure them; but posterity experienced their effects. Thirty years after his time, Pepys thus comments upon the improvement in our naval force, as a popular theme of remark--"Sir William Compton I heard talk with great pleasure of the difference between the fleet now and in Queene Elizabeth’s days, when, in ’88, she had but thirty-six sail, great and small, in the world, and ten rounds of powder was their allowance against the Spaniard."[[286]]
Among the articles of Buckingham’s subsequent impeachment, in 1626, there was inserted the following statement: “The East India Company having, in 1624, loaded four ships and two pinnaces for India, the Lord High Admiral, knowing that they must lose their voyage unless they sailed on a certain day, extorted from them the sum of ten thousand pounds for liberty to sail for India.” Upon being charged with this act of tyranny, the Duke justified himself by the plea that the Company had captured several rich prizes from the Portuguese at Ormuz and elsewhere, and that a large portion of the plunder was due to the King, and also to himself as High Admiral; and he proved that the sum said to be extorted from the Company was given by way of compromise, instead of 15,000l., which was legally due; and he was able to show that the whole sum, except two hundred pounds, was appropriated by the King for the use of the navy.[[287]]
One fact was soon acknowledged, that even King James the First had a stronger and more magnificent navy than any of his predecessors. It is worthy of remark, that such was the comparative ignorance of the times in ship-building, that when a shipwright named Bunnell, who had been employed by the East India Company, was brought, on account of his pre-eminence, into the British navy, “he was mistaken in the construction of the first ship that he built for the King;” because, as Bishop Goodman relates, "he did not observe the difference between the merchant ships and the King’s ships--the one made for stowage, the other only for strength and magnificence."[[288]]
Such was the state of our maritime affairs at the accession of Charles the First. The object to which all these preparations were destined was soon apparent. Trifling as this naval force appeared in those days, it was deemed magnificent in the reign of the Stuart Kings.